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Talk:Carpetbag Booker
This one really made me cringe. There are series like Detina where it's puns all around, and those are fun. But when you've only got one punny name, the humor really gets drained out of it fast. (Not that having such a labored and joyless pun helps any; was "Hey, books have pages!" really the best he could come up with?) The HoD setting is clearly otherworldly, but with place names and geography and all the historical details we get suggesting it's essentially our world (unlike TCotTSD), I would have preferred real names for people too. Now HT didn't want to do that, but he found a clever workaround. Booker and not-Gibson are the only quasi-historicals who actually appear onstage (I think), but lots of others are alluded to. None of them by their real names, but all of them by nicknames (in some cases lesser-known ones, like Larrupin' Lou) or partial names or just descriptions, like "that loud fellow in Europe" who had commandeered the use of the symbol of the hooked cross. It was brilliant: You could believe the people hinted at were actual historical figures if you wanted, or you could believe they were alter egos if you preferred. But this guy really ruined that for everyone. Although the Major League teams sort of did the same. Why couldn't the Archdeacons have been the Gashouse Gang, or the Highlanders, Murderers' Row? Turtle Fan (talk) 07:42, September 6, 2018 (UTC) :I realize that he wanted to emphasize the fantasy elements, but I agree, he might as well have used the real Paige. The fantasy elements were clear either way. TR (talk) 15:09, September 6, 2018 (UTC) ::If Satchel Paige had been burning "rebellious" zombies, I wouldn't have noticed him doing it because I would have been too preoccupied with the fact that it was Satchel Paige. No, wait, that's not true. Turtle Fan (talk) 22:06, September 6, 2018 (UTC) :off the top of my head, I thought of Benjamin Harrison Caesar and Joel Alson as additional punning names. (The latter more of a Kurt Haldweim type.) On the other hand, we also had a "Fred and Ginger" picture. Who knows why except maybe author's whims. ML4E (talk) 16:32, September 6, 2018 (UTC) ::Oh yeah, Benjamin Harrison Caesar. That's another one. We had The Bambino and Larrupin' Lou and the splendid splinter (too young and unknown at that point for the capital letters he would soon earn). But there's no nickname like that for Alexander. He was occasionally referred to as "Old Pete," God knows why, but that's hardly a widely recognized name for him. (Then again, I recall each of us missing some of the other nicknames, and while I'm pretty sure we all caught The Bambino, even that one's not going to be universally recognized.) ::You also had Honest Abe, who doesn't absolutely have to be Lincoln, and Billy the Kid, which is also a nickname, albeit one so universally used that it's completely obscured his real name. And HT alluded to himself as Erik Iverson, though he might have meant some other author who also used that pen name: Henry Callingbird? Harold Frenchhen? ::Joel Alson either went over my head at the time, or I've forgotten about it since. Turtle Fan (talk) 22:06, September 6, 2018 (UTC) :::Of the hist figs with alternate full names, Booker is the only one who appears on stage, and the one with the least organic nickname.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 07:11, September 7, 2018 (UTC)